Growing Up Biracial
Growing up black in a white family was a lot of things and weird is definitely one of them. According to my grandma, I wasn’t allowed to have black Barbie’s. When she was in her eighties she was reminiscing about how a coon baby was born. I have a strange relationship with race.
I missed out on so much of black culture and my mother had me do things she thought of as black like African dancing or learning about Kwanzaa. Unless you’re black you don’t know what it’s like to be black, just like I don’t know what it’s like to be gay or what it’s like to be a man. I can imagine until I’m blue in the face but it doesn’t matter. A Historically Black College (HBC) should have been suggested to me. I’m so sick of the white washing I was fed.
I was raised in a white family and my grandmother’s family were staunch democrats. It was back when being a democrat meant something different. Being a democrat meant being a supporter of slavery. No wonder my family had issues raising me. My cousin posted a person in black face and that is the perfect example of the hateful ignorance that my family can hold. No wonder I don’t feel close to them. I’ve always been different.
I cringe at token advocacy. Remember the safety pin thing? Basically, if you saw a person wearing a pin they knew you were an ally. I think that’s stupid. Nobody cares if you’re wearing a safety pin and nobody’s going to look. It’s like the time Pelosi wore some tribal cloth with others and kneeled after a cop murdered George Floyd. Although support was welcome, the way they did it was out of touch. We have white teenagers (kids) running around looking down on black people. What have they done besides being born?
January 6th was a white (majority) mob attacking the capitol. Now America can see the underbelly that black people have seen for hundreds of years. I’ve always identified myself as biracial when the country identifies me as black. I’m just coming to terms with this but the experience is the same whether you identify as biracial or black. In college I checked the race boxes of black and white. I happened to check back on it and some white lady changed it to black. I made her change it back. Nobody is going to tell me what I am, especially not a random white lady from upstate New York.
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